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The Wright brothers, Orville Wright (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. [3][4][5] They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier ...
Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 – 29 July 1953) was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterward describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew.
v. t. e. An electric aircraft is an aircraft powered by electricity. Electric aircraft are seen as a way to reduce the environmental effects of aviation, providing zero emissions and quieter flights. Electricity may be supplied by a variety of methods, the most common being batteries. Most have electric motors driving propellers or turbines.
The Wright Flyer was a canard biplane configuration, with a wingspan of 40 feet 4 inches (12.29 m), a camber of 1-20, a wing area of 510 square feet (47 m 2), and a length of 21 feet 1 inch (6.43 m). The right wing was 4 inches (10 cm) longer because the engine was 30 to 40 pounds (14 to 18 kg) heavier than Orville or Wilbur.
Signature. Hans Christian Ørsted ForMemRS FRSE (/ ˈɜːrstɛd /; [ 5 ]Danish: [ˈhænˀs ˈkʰʁestjæn ˈɶɐ̯steð] ⓘ; often rendered Oersted in English [ note 1 ]; 14 August 1777 – 9 March 1851) was a Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields. This phenomenon is called Oersted's law and ...
Several aviators have been claimed to be the first to fly a powered aeroplane. Much controversy surrounds these claims. It is generally accepted today that the Wright brothers were the first to achieve sustained and controlled powered manned flight, in 1903. It is popularly held in Brazil that their native citizen Alberto Santos-Dumont was the ...
Another advance was made in 1884, when the first fully controllable free-flight was made in a French Army electric-powered airship, La France, by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs. The 170-foot (52 m) long, 66,000-cubic-foot (1,900 m 3) airship covered 8 km (5.0 mi) in 23 minutes with the aid of an 8½ horsepower electric motor.
Between 1900 and 1910, many scientists like Wilhelm Wien, Max Abraham, Hermann Minkowski, or Gustav Mie believed that all forces of nature are of electromagnetic origin (the so-called "electromagnetic world view"). This was connected with the electron theory developed between 1892 and 1904 by Hendrik Lorentz.